{"id":42346,"date":"2022-02-05T15:42:15","date_gmt":"2022-02-05T22:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lost-for-a-month-a-western-slope-dog-reunited-with-her-owners-in-unlikely-way\/"},"modified":"2022-02-05T22:42:15","modified_gmt":"2022-02-05T22:42:15","slug":"lost-for-a-month-a-western-slope-dog-reunited-with-her-owners-in-unlikely-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lost-for-a-month-a-western-slope-dog-reunited-with-her-owners-in-unlikely-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Lost for a month, a Western Slope dog reunited with her owners in unlikely way"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mia\u2019s
Mia\u2019s owner, Charles Reigies, and his girlfriend, Hanna Poscente, sit with Mia on their couch after the trio was reunited. (Stina Sieg\/CPR News)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For more than a month, countless animal lovers across Colorado\u2019s Western Slope were gripped by the same question: Where is Mia?<\/p>\n

But you\u2019d never know it from the rescue dog\u2019s calm demeanor now, flopped on the couch next to her owner, Charles Reigies, and his girlfriend, Hanna Poscente. Mia is shy and quiet, with short, white fur, brown spots and floppy ears \u2013 and a story the couple will never fully know.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s still got a lot of weight to put back on,\u201d said Reigies, patting Mia, her ribs showing, \u201cbut the vet says she’s doing good, all things considered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mia\u2019s saga began the day after Christmas, when she and the couple were driving back home to Grand Junction from Denver on I-70. It was one of the first storms of the season. Reigies hit a patch of black ice, and they went swerving.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the time I came to, she was hurt and the dog was gone, and the Jeep was on its side,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When they crashed, it was nighttime, and they weren\u2019t close to anything, about 7 miles outside the small town of Gypsum. An ambulance rushed Poscente to a hospital with a broken neck. As Reigies waited for a tow truck, he kept searching for Mia in the snow. But there were no signs of her.<\/p>\n

The next day, Poscente, now home, reactivated her Facebook account just to post about Mia. To look for help. She joined groups dedicated to lost and found pets across the region. Days passed. The posts were liked and shared, and the search continued with the help of strangers, who also left food out for Mia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were like their own little village looking for Mia, a dog they had never met before,\u201d Poscente said.<\/p>\n

And if that village had a mayor, it would be Janet Cross, who lives about 20 minutes from the crash site. She had heard that pets will keep returning to where they\u2019ve lost their people. So, 10 days after the crash, she set up a trail camera at the site.<\/p>\n

She could see that Mia was coming back twice a day.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s looking at the spot. She\u2019s looking for her family. She\u2019s looking skinny,\u201d Cross said. \u201cIt\u2019s cold. It\u2019s freezing out.\u201d<\/p>\n

She found the images heartbreaking, but also hopeful. Mia was alive.<\/p>\n

There were so many more sightings \u2013 by Cross and others. There were near misses, too. One of the days when the couple came back to the crash site, they left at 5 that afternoon. The camera recorded Mia at 7.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could tell she was like, \u2018Wait, I smell them,\u2019\u201d Poscente said, smiling.<\/p>\n

The fact they live two hours away from their crash site just made everything harder. Reigies, who found Mia at the Rifle Animal Shelter in 2018, kept grieving her over and over.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust any day we came back empty handed, it was terrible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Mia\u2019s story was still being shared continually on Facebook. And Cross had received a trap from animal control \u2013 which the agency required her to check every hour. So she did that, parking at a nearby gas station between checks.<\/p>\n

Finding Mia basically became her full-time job.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I just couldn\u2019t give up,\u201d she said. \u201cI just couldn\u2019t give up on her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then things got more dire. A deer fence the car crash had destroyed was rebuilt, and many of Mia\u2019s online followers worried she was trapped behind it. There were no Mia sightings for eight days.<\/p>\n

Finally, Poscente received a fateful call from a woman.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking at your dog,\u201d she remembers her saying.<\/p>\n

The woman was calling from Gypsum, about 10 miles from where the couple had crashed. Cross put out the trap again, and a friend drove Poscente, still in a neck brace, to the area.<\/p>\n

\"Hanna
Hanna Poscente took this selfie moments after she found Mia. A series of tips led the two back together. Mia was hungry and cold, but unhurt. (Courtesy of Hanna Poscente)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That first night, Mia got scared off. But they stayed at a nearby hotel, and the next morning, Poscente decided to try one more time. Her friend left to take a meeting by phone, and Poscente started walking down the train tracks as snow fell. She looked up and to her left, and there Mia was, completely camouflaged in the snow and sagebrush.<\/p>\n

Mia didn\u2019t get scared. She didn\u2019t run off. She yawned and started walking toward Poscente, who filmed the moment with her cellphone.<\/p>\n

\u201cHi, baby, hi!\u201d Poscente says in the video, her voice hoarse with emotion, as Mia ambles closer. \u201cOh my God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then the video cuts off, because Mia started jumping all over her. When they got home, Mia knocked Reigies off his feet, as he melted into tears.<\/p>\n

When Cross heard the news about Mia, couldn\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe fought traffic and predators and snow and wind, and I mean, she made it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She had been gone for one month and one day. Mia\u2019s story keeps getting shared on Facebook, often with the words \u201cNever give up hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Public Radio, visit www.cpr.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mia\u2019s owner, Charles Reigies, and his girlfriend, Hanna Poscente, sit with Mia on their couch after the trio was reunited. (Stina Sieg\/CPR News) For more than a month, countless animal lovers across Colorado\u2019s Western Slope were gripped by the same question: Where is Mia? But you\u2019d never know it from the rescue dog\u2019s calm demeanor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-42346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42346"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=42346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}